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MA´NICA

MA´NICA a sleeve, regarded as effeminate until the
later Empire. Verg. A. 9.616, “Et
tunicae manicas et habent redimicula mitrae O vere Phrygiae,” and Gel.
6.12, “Tunicis uti virum prolixis ultra brachia et usque in
primores manus ac prope digitos Romae atque omni in Latio indecorum
fuit.” But the fashion changed, “Talares et manicatas
tunicas habere apud Romanos veteres flagitium erat nunc autem honesto
loco natis, cum tunicati sunt non eas habere flagitium est.”
(Augustin. de doct. Christ. 3.20.) Besides the use of sleeves
sewed to the tunic, which, when so manufactured, was called chiridota or manicatatunica (Curt. 3.7, p. 12, ed. Zumpt),
sleeves were also worn as a separate part of the dress. Palladius (deReRust. 1.43) mentions the propriety of
providing ocreas manicasque de pellibus, i.e.
leggings and sleeves made of hides, as useful both to the huntsman and to
the agricultural labourer. The Roman gladiators wore, together with greaves,
a sleeve of an appropriate kind on the right arm and hand (Juv. 6.255), as is exhibited in the woodcuts under
GLADIATOR.

These parts of dress are mentioned together even as early as the Homeric age
(see Od. 24.228, 229). In this passage the manicae (χειρίδες) seem to be fingerless gloves, worn on the hands to
protect them from briars and thorns; and Eustathius, in his commentary on
the other passage, distinguishes between these and gloves, which he calls
χειρίδεςδακτυλωταί (p. 1960, init.). The χειρὶςπλέαἀργυρίου was probably not (as in Liddell and Scott) a
sleeve, but a [p. 2.121]leathern glove, like that in the
Odyssey, used as a purse.

Gloves with fingers (digitalia, Varro, deReRust. 1.55) were worn among the Romans for the
performance of certain manual operations. Pliny the younger refers also to
the use of manicae in winter to protect the hands from cold
(Epist. 3.5). Those used by the Persians were probably made
of fur, perhaps resembling muffs: the Persians also wore gloves in winter
(δακτνλῆθραι,Xen. Cyrop. 8.3, § 17). In an
enumeration of the instruments of torture used in the fourth century of the
Christian era we observe “the glove” (Synes.
Epist. 58); probably an iron glove for crushing the hand, as
the “boot” did the leg.